Highgate House Pool

It was nearly 20 years ago, whilst heading up the interior design team at one of London’s top architectural practices, where the creative director first worked on this amazing house project.  Completed in 1995 and taking nearly 10 years to complete by the original architect, the RIBA praised the building as one of the most wonderful new houses in England.  At the time René first worked on it, the amazing pool project received mostly a cosmetic makeover with the addition of a spa pool and some new mosaics, but as time has passed, the space now needed a more serious makeover.

On site, we will strip back everything to its bare bones, exposing not only the original canvas but also any compromised workmanship.  Work will include enlarging the gym by knocking through to the redundant kitchenette, stripping out all finishes, upgrading the shower and change room, upgrading the lighting and overhauling the air handling unit. As the property is mostly concrete it was difficult at the time, to lay new cabling for AV and lighting but now with modern technology, many more refined options are available.  

Our design needed to incorporate all of the structural features such as columns and steels but upgrade to a more sophisticated scheme.  We looked at classical columns that could be reimagined to appear more elegant, applying luxe finishes with subtle textures, installing state of the art AV for sound and new lighting to create magic when the sun goes down.  Currently the columns are plain but badly rendered; we plan to cover them in specially made GRG shells with integrated halo lighting top and bottom and further recessed vertical RGB troughs.  Existing plain glass double doors to the gym and the shower room will be replaced with bespoke sandblasted doors with a ‘watery’ texture design, emulating the ripples in the pool water.  A locally based London lighting firm will be supplying a very large ‘ribbon’ LED to disguise the steels in the middle of the ceiling and provide a feature focus.  The old plastic spa pool will be ripped out and replaced with a bespoke contemporary stainless steel jacuzzi.  Finally, walls will receive a specially created polished plaster with a directional texture again emulating water, with reverse embossed leaves giving a dappled effect.  Over this we will gild in two tones, further leaves creating a sophisticated three dimensional artwork, reflecting the magical garden beyond the glass doors.  The project is due to complete mid-March 2025.